Friday, October 26, 2012

If you live in one of the contested FWCS school board districts, you may or may not know that incumbents John Peirce and Becky Hill are being challenged by Jenna Jehl and Michael Davis respectively. If you know nothing about any of them then the key to your vote should be that the JG endorsed the incumbents. After an earlier editorial encouraging people to run for the board, they then proceeded to trash those who did because they looked to be conservative.

Incumbent 32 year board "vet" Steve Corona, another JG favorite, is unchallenged in district five. Mr. "proven leadership", as his billboards said four years ago, has been sitting on the board for 32 years watching my former school district and high school go down the tubes. Like the two challenged incumbents, Corona is still ignorant about the situation in our classrooms. But since all three believe Wendy walks on water, they're more than happy to take her word for the state of the district. Ms. O'Frisco's recommendation referred to increasing pressure from the state. That's the result of no pressure from a blissfully ignorant board of cheerleaders.

Michael Davis is the owner of a software business he started. He knows the educational requirements of today's economy. He had three kids in FWCS. He knows what's going on in the buildings. I know Mr. Davis personally and supported him with a check.

I don't know Ms. Jehl personally. She was endorsed by the Sentinel. Predictably, she was dismissed by the JG. That alone would make her the best choice to replace John Peirce.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

The new FWCS high school grading system has been rolled out as described in a lengthy article on the front page of the Sunday JG. An appropriate summary would be "Much ado about nothing." Well, OK, it will have an impact on can drives..

According to Faye Robbins-Williams they wanted to address inconsistencies such as students who were getting F's in all their classes passing the standardized tests with flying colors. What a ridiculous statement. Absolutely backwards. But it does point out again that high school grades mean nothing. With any grading system teachers will still have to find a way to pass 50% of an algebra class when only 20% can pass the ECA.

The problem with the high schools is the elementary schools and middle schools that feed them. A high school grading system will do nothing to fix that.